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Myrtle Beach is a coastal resort city in Horry County, South Carolina, United States. It is the de facto hub of both the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area and the Grand Strand, a complex of beach towns and barrier islands stretching from Little River to Georgetown, South Carolina.

Arising from a getaway for lumber workers from Conway, Myrtle Beach has rapidly developed into a major tourist destination in the Southeastern United States in the latter 20th century and 2000s. As of 2006, the metro area had an estimated population of 299,353. According to the 2000 census, the area was the 13th fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States.

History
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the general area along Long Bay was inhabited by the Waccamaw Indians. The Waccamaw used the river for travel and fished along the shore around Little River. Waties Island, the primary barrier island along Long Bay, has evidence of burial and shell mounds, remains of the visiting Waccamaw.

The first settler along Long Bay arrived in the late 18th Century, attempting to extend the plantation system outward towards the ocean. Records are sparse from this period, with most of the recorded history pieced together from old land grants. They were met with mixed results, producing unremarkable quantities of indigo and tobacco. The coast's soil was sandy and most of the crop yields were of an inferior quality.

Prior to the American Revolution, the area along the future Grand Strand was essentially uninhabited. Several families received land grants along the coast, including most notably the Withers: John, Richard, William and Mary. They received an area around present-day Myrtle Swash, at the time known as Wither's Swash or the 8-Mile Swash. Another grant was given to James Minor, a barrier island named Minor Island, now Waties Island, off of the coast near Little River.

Mary Wither's gravestone at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church speaks to the remoteness of the former Strand: "She gave up the pleasures of Society and retired to Long Bay, where she resided a great part of her life devoted to the welfare of her children."



As America reached independence, Horry County remained essentially unchanged, and the coast remained barren. George Washington scouted out the Southern states during his term, traveling down the King's Highway. He stayed the night at Windy Hill and was led across Wither's Swash to Georgetown by Jeremiah Vereen.

The Withers family remained one of the few settlers around Myrtle Beach for the next half-century. In 1822, a strong hurricane swept the house of R. F. Withers into the ocean, drowning 18 people inside. The tragedy made the Withers family decide to abandon their plots along the coast, and the area, left unattended, began to return to forest.

Following the Civil War, most of the abandoned land along the ocean was purchased by the Conway Lumber Company, now New South Lumber. The company built the Conway & Seashore Railroad to move chopped timber from the coast inland. A "Withers" post office was established at the site of the old Swash.



After the railroad was finished, employees of the lumber and railroad company would take train flatcars down to the beach on their weekends off, in essence becoming the first Grand Strand tourists. The area where the railroad ended was nicknamed "New Town", contrasting it with the "Old Town", or Conway.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Joe Mercier envisioned turning New Town into a tourist destination, a coastal town rivaling the northern beaches like Coney Island. Burroughs died in 1897, but his sons completed the railroad's expansion to the beach and opened the Seaside Inn in 1901, to house new visitors.

Founded in 1938, it continued to grow for the next couple of decades, and in 1957, it finally incorporated. a contest was held to name the town and Burroughs' wife suggested honoring the locally abundant shrub, the wax myrtle. So the town was named Myrtle Beach.

In 1937, Myrtle Beach Municipal Airport was built, however it was promptly taken over by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1940 and converted into a military base. Also in 1940, Kings Highway was finally paved, giving Myrtle Beach its first primary highway.

Geography
It is situated mainly between the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway on the west and the Atlantic Ocean (Long Bay) on the East, although building west of the waterway is rapidly increasing. Much of the area between the coast and the waterway is a slightly elevated sandbar or dune area. West of the waterway the land is mostly pine forest with a normal high water table, in which developers dredge ponds and use the soil to create elevated areas for better drainage around buildings. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 16.8 square miles (43.5 km²), of which, 16.76 square miles (43.5 km²) of it is land and 0.04 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (0.12%) is water.

Climate
According to Köppen classification, Myrtle Beach has a humid subtropical climate. The city experiences mild winters and a humid summer.

Neighborhoods and suburbs
Myrtle Beach also has various neighborhoods in the city, notably:


 * Myrtle Ridge
 * Withers Preserve
 * Jaluco
 * Konig
 * Ocean Forest
 * Pine Island
 * Stalvey
 * Palmetto Pointe

Myrtle Beach is also surrounded by various other towns and beaches, notably Surfside Beach to the south, North Myrtle Beach to the north; and Conway further inland.

Demographics


Myrtle Beach is the largest principal city of the Myrtle Beach-Conway-Georgetown CSA, a Combined Statistical Area that includes the Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach metropolitan area (Horry County) and the Georgetown micropolitan area (Georgetown County),  which had a combined population of 273,405 at the 2000 census.

As of the census of 2000, there were 22,759 people, 10,413 households, and 5,414 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,356.3 people per square mile (523.7/km²). There were 14,658 housing units at an average density of 873.5/sq mi (337.3/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 81.16% White, 12.76% African-American, 0.42% Native American, 1.28% Asian, 0.13% Pacific Islander, 2.37% from other races, and 1.88% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.67% of the population.

There were 10,413 households out of which 20.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.8% were married couples living together, 11.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 48.0% were non-families. 34.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.17 and the average family size was 2.79.

In the city the population was spread out with 18.0% under the age of 18, 11.0% from 18 to 24, 33.6% from 25 to 44, 22.5% from 45 to 64, and 15.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 103.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.0 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $35,498, and the median income for a family was $43,900. Males had a median income of $26,039 versus $22,473 for females. The per capita income for the city was $23,214. About 7.6% of families and 12.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.1% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over.

Economy
Myrtle Beach's economy is mostly tourism-based, with tourism bringing in billions of dollars each season. Hotels/resorts, restaurants and golf courses are found across the Grand Strand, with a large number concentrating in the downtown area of the city. The city's theme parks such as Myrtle Waves, Freestyle Music Park and the festival-style Broadway at the Beach also are significant additions to the economy. The many conferences and conventions held in the area add to the city as well. Farms that produce tobacco, indigo, watermelons, berries, and other crops also give good amounts of money into the city. Lumber companies and railroads give modest amounts of money to the city. Factories that produce plastic, rubber, cardboard, styrofoam, and ceramics also exist in the city.

Tourism
Hosting over 14.6 million visitors annually, The Grand Strand is home to an array of tourist attractions, and the area receives a large influx of visitors during the spring, summer and fall months, and "snowbirds" in the winter. Over ten million tourists visit Myrtle Beach and the surrounding areas every year. The area's attractions include its beaches and many golf courses, as well as a number of amusement parks, an aquarium, over 1,900 restaurants including seafood restaurants, and a number of shopping complexes. Myrtle Beach has an estimated 460 hotels, with many on the beachfront, and approximately 89,000 accommodation units in total. The area also has an IMAX theater, dinner theater, nightclubs, and many tourist shops. Other attractions include the Myrtle Beach State Park and fishing. The area is also popular for business meetings and conventions. The area recently welcomed Hard Rock Park, a park themed after the popular Hard Rock Cafe chain. The park featured attractions themed after different genres of music, such as the British Invasion. Hard Rock Park was only open for the summer of 2008, afterwords filling for bankruptcy protection. The park was sold, the buyer only acquiring the physical property, not the intellectual property, and was thus re-named Freestyle Music Park and re-opened on Memorial Day 2009. All of the rides remained, however the new owners were forced to re-name them. Also in the city is Myrtle Waves, one of the largest water parks on the eastern seaboard. Broadway at the Beach is a popular shopping and entertainment destination.

Visitors should note that the city council has passed a number of ordinances affecting the city limits of Myrtle Beach, that may not be the same as the rest of the state.

It is notable that although gambling is not legal in the state of South Carolina, the city has access to several gambling boats, which "legally transports passengers into international waters beyond the reach of federal and state gambling laws."

Amusement parks and tourist attractions
Myrtle Beach is home to many tourist attractions, notably Family Kingdom Amusement Park, a sea-side amusement park, Freestyle Music Park (formerly Hard Rock Park), and the diverse Broadway at the Beach, which features many shopping, tourism, and dining attractions. Myrtle Waves is one of the largest water parks on the eastern seaboard. Myrtle Beach also has over 40 varied miniature golf courses along the strand.

From 1948 until 2006, a popular staple of Myrtle Beach tourism was the Myrtle Beach Pavilion. This historic landmark and the large amusement park across the street were demolished after the 2006 season; this area has been a large empty, unused lot for 3 seasons.

Shopping complexes
Myrtle Beach has many different stores and malls, is one of the largest shopping areas in the Southeastern United States, and is the largest shopping destination in South Carolina.


 * Barefoot Landing opened in 1988. Many years before, it was known as the 'Village of the Barefoot Traders' and offered a small handful of shops.  Today, there are over 100 stores, restaurants and attractions.  The natural setting, and environmental sensitivity comes from Barefoot Landing being the only shopping/dining attraction located on the Intracoastal Waterway.  Barefoot Landing is the home of the 'Myrtle Beach Ghost Walk,' featuring the history and folklore of the Grand Strand area.  The center also has the Alabama Theatre, which has concerts by traditional country music singers.  The center also has a golf resort.


 * Coastal Grand Mall opened in 2004. The mall, which has indoor and outdoor shopping areas, has a gross leasable area of 929,868 square feet.  The single-story facility features five anchor stores (including Belk, JCPenney, and Dillard's), a 14-screen movie theater, a food court, and roughly 170 stores in total.


 * Myrtle Beach Mall is 525,385 square feet, and features three anchor stores, notably Bass Pro Shops, as well as Belk and JCPenney. The single-story mall also has a 12-screen movie theater, a food court, and a variety of other specialty stores.  This is formerly known as Colonial Mall, and originally Briarcliffe Mall.


 * Tanger Outlets at Myrtle Beach at Myrtle Beach features over 100 brand name outlets from many of the country's most popular brands, such as Nautica and Sony. It is located on U.S. Route 501 entering the city.


 * Broadway at the Beach is a shopping complex set on 350 acres along the Highway 17 Bypass, featuring three theaters, 17 restaurants and more than 100 specialty shops as well as attractions, nightclubs, and three hotels, all surrounding the 23-acre Lake Broadway. It is the largest festival entertainment complex in South Carolina.  Notable attractions are an IMAX theater, Ripley's Aquarium, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and The Pavilion Nostalgia Park.

Conventions and special events
Myrtle Beach hosts a variety of special conventions, events, and musical concerts. Each March since 1951 during Ontario's spring break, Myrtle Beach has hosted Canadian-American Days, also known as Can-Am Days. Tens of thousands tourists flock to the area for a week's worth of special events.

The area is home to the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, a large facility that hosts an array of different meetings, conferences, exhibits, and special events every year.

Myrtle Beach Bike Week, a week-long motorcycle rally, brings tens of thousands of visitors to the city every May. The event is not sanctioned by the city, which has passed restrictive ordinances targeting the rallies. All events take place outside the city in Horry County, Murrells Inlet or North Myrtle Beach.

Every year in late July, Myrtle Beach hosts "Mustang Week". Mustang Week is the southeast's largest gathering of Mustangs and SVT's for a week of fun and events. Events include a Meet-and-Greet, a day of runs at Myrtle Beach Speedway, Drag Night at Darlington's drag strip, a car show at the Colonial Mall, and the week ends with a 7-hour cruise in at the same mall. The events bring in over 500 Mustang owners, and the car show attracts over 6,000 spectators.

Sports
Myrtle Beach is home to two minor league sports teams, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, a Carolina League baseball team and Atlanta Braves farm franchise, and the Myrtle Beach Thunderboltz, an ECHL hockey team that will eventually play regularly at Coastal Carolina University in nearby Conway.

The area also has the BB&T Coastal Field, the home field of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. The stadium, located just off Highway 17 in Myrtle Beach, opened in 1999. It seats 6,500 people. It is the finish point of the annual Bi-Lo Myrtle Beach Marathon, an athletics event held in February of each year.

BB&T Coastal Field is also home of the annual "Baseball At The Beach" collegiate baseball tournament. Hosted by Coastal Carolina University each year, the tournament pits participating NCAA Division I baseball programs in the United States.

The area hosts the annual Bi-Lo Myrtle Beach Marathon, a track and field event in February featuring a Friday night 5K and a Saturday half-marathon, marathon, and relay. Marathon day draws the limit of 6,000 runners annually (2,500 full, 3,500 half) and results usually in an unusual dawn as the race starts before dawn (6:30 AM) in order to finish by 2:30 PM.

Stock car racing is held at Myrtle Beach Speedway, a .538 mile semi-banked asphaltic oval track located on US 501.

Golfing
The area is home to many golf courses and mini golf courses which are located along the beach and further inland. Myrtle Beach has been called the "Golf Capital of the World" because of the 120 golf courses located there, the record 4.2 million rounds played, and many miniature golf courses. 3.7 million total rounds of golf were played in 2007. The majority of the area's golf courses are open to the public. Some of the notable golf courses and/or resorts are as follows:


 * Arcadian Shores Golf Club
 * Arrowhead Country Club
 * Barefoot Resort and Golf Club
 * Burning Ridge Golf Course
 * Grand Dunes Golf Resort
 * Myrtle Beach National Golf Course
 * River Oaks Golf Plantation

Parks and recreation
Myrtle Beach is home to Myrtle Beach State Park, an open beach, fishing pier full of anglers and stories. The park also features campgrounds in the oceanfront woods. The park is located on the coast just south of the Myrtle Beach city limits.

Television
The Grand Strand and Florence, South Carolina share a common defined market by Nielsen Media Research in Horry, Marion, Dillon, Darlington, Marlboro, Scotland, Robeson, and Florence counties. The Myrtle Beach / Florence Market is the 103rd largest market in the USA as defined by Nielsen Media Research. Television stations serving the area are as follows in the blue box:

Radio
Myrtle Beach, along with The Grand Strand, makes up the 158th largest radio market in the United States. Radio stations serving the area are as follows in the blue box:

Newspapers
The Sun News is the largest daily paper published along the Grand Strand, with a readership base extending from Georgetown, South Carolina to Sunset Beach, North Carolina. The paper has been in existence since the 1930s and was formerly published by Knight Ridder before that company was bought by The McClatchy Company.

The area is also served by several weekly papers, including The Weekly Surge, the Myrtle Beach Herald, and the Horry Independent.

Education
The Myrtle Beach metro area is home to two major institutes of higher learning, Coastal Carolina University and Horry-Georgetown Technical College in nearby Conway. The area is home to a branch of Webster University, an MBA graduate school, and NAIA, a flight school. Cathedral Bible College is located in Myrtle Beach.

The entire area of Horry County is served by a single public school system, Horry County Schools, including the Blue Ribbon Schools The Academy of Arts, Science, and Technology and St. James Middle School. The Myrtle Beach area is dotted with private schools of various sizes and motifs, notably St. Andrew's Catholic School, Christian Academy of Myrtle Beach, Carolina Bays Academy, and Chabad Academy.

Healthcare
The Myrtle Beach area is served by the Grand Strand Regional Medical Center, a 219-bed acute care hospital serving residents and visitors of Horry and surrounding counties. The hospital offers the only cardiac surgery program in the area and is also a designated trauma center. The facility has more than 250 physicians.

Airports

 * The Myrtle Beach International Airport serves the Myrtle Beach area, located on the south side of town. The airport opened in 1976, and has served the Myrtle Beach area continuously. Hooters Air began operating out of Myrtle Beach in early 2003, only to be closed in early 2006 due to rising airline prices and the airline industry as a whole.  DayJet serves 12 South Eastern cities with nonstop flights, and major airlines provide national and international service.  There are also vestiges of the old Myrtle Beach Air Force Base.There is also an Omniflight helicopter base in Myrtle Beach that flies in surrounding areas throughout the Grand Strand.


 * The Grand Strand Airport, located in the North Myrtle Beach area, is a single-terminal airport (CRE), serving primarily banner planes and small aircraft.

Major highways



 * [[Image:US 17.svg|30px]] U.S. Route 17, allows traffic to bypass King's Highway to the west from the northern city limits to [[Image:US 501.svg|35px]] U.S. Route 501. The road runs from Murrells Inlet, South Carolina to North Myrtle Beach


 * [[Image:US 501.svg|35px]] U.S. Route 501 is a more direct path from Aynor, South Carolina, through Conway, and into Myrtle Beach proper. The road crosses the Intracoastal Waterway and is a popular entrance to the area if coming from [[Image:I-95 (SC).svg|30px]] Interstate 95.


 * [[Image:South Carolina 31.svg|35px]] S.C. Highway 31/Carolina Bays Parkway is a six-lane Interstate Highway standards freeway that parallels (in most case) the Intracoastal Waterway from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It runs from [[Image:South Carolina 544.svg|35px]] South Carolina 544 to [[Image:South Carolina 9.svg|35px]] South Carolina 9.


 * [[Image:Business plate.svg|30px]] [[Image:US 17.svg|30px]] US Route 17 Business goes through Downtown Myrtle Beach.


 * [[Image:South Carolina 22.svg|35px]] Conway Bypass is a four lane freeway that connects [[Image:US 501.svg|35px]] U.S. Route 501 north of Conway, South Carolina to [[Image:US 17.svg|30px]] U.S. Route 17 in Myrtle Beach.

Rail
Myrtle Beach is served by a single rail line which essentially runs parallel to U.S. Route 501 from Conway ending in downtown Myrtle Beach. The tracks are owned by Horry County, but were leased in 2000 to the Carolina Southern Railroad (CSRR) which operates on the line as the Waccamaw Coastline Railroad. Carolina Southern Railroad is a shortline rail operator running on less than 100 miles of rail at a maximum speed of 10 mph. It transports mostly freight brought to it from national rail operators such as CSX. The company makes one scheduled delivery per month into the City of Myrtle Beach.

Recent developments and future plans
Within the last decade, new roads have been created to ease congestion caused by the yearly influx of visitors. Most of these roads follow the Metro Loop Road Plan, organized in 1997 to improve the traffic flow of Myrtle Beach. Some of the roads included have either been funded through RIDE I funding or through the City of Myrtle Beach.

RIDE II plans include the third phase of the Carolina Bays Parkway, a graded separation of Farrow Parkway and US 17 Bypass at the back gate of the former Air Force base, and many other projects. The county is currently debating where to allocate the $400 million generated through a proposed 1-cent sales tax. Other road projects in Horry County, including some in Aynor and Conway, will be included when voted upon.

Myrtle Beach will eventually be served by two interstates, Interstate 73 and Interstate 74. The North Myrtle Beach Connector will connect I-74 to downtown North Myrtle Beach.

Sister cities

 * 🇦🇷 Pinamar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
 * 🇬🇧 Keighley, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
 * 🇨🇦 Burlington, Ontario, Canada
 * 🇮🇪 Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland

Notable residents and natives

 * Ramon Sessions, NBA player